Bernardo Silva: Players are exhausted by calendar that will harm football

Manchester City winger says new 32-team Club World Cup will mean games lose their ‘intensity’

Bernardo Silva has admitted that he and fellow leading players in European football are starting to feel exhaustion at the punishing match calendar – to which Fifa have just added a new 32-team summer Club World Cup in 18 months’ time.
The Manchester City playmaker and winger was speaking ahead of his team’s Club World Cup semi-final against Urawa Red Diamonds of Japan in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday night – the last time this competition will be played in its current shorter format.
Bernardo said: “I am not going to lie, sometimes I feel tired. All of us, we feel tired for some games as well because we play every three days. We don’t rest. We have no Christmas. We have no summer. But that’s the price you pay for being at a top club and fighting for all competitions and our dream was to play at this level.”
The Fifa Council agreed the qualifying format for the new 32-team Club World Cup to be played every four years starting in June and July of 2025. The competition is a major new revenue driver for Fifa in its battle with Uefa, the wealthiest football governing body, for global broadcast revenue. Fifa has stressed that all clubs have agreed to the new format, which Bernardo and his manager Pep Guardiola both acknowledged.
Bernardo said: “We play and we obviously earn a lot of money, and all these kinds of things. But in my opinion – for the people who love the game and are entertained by the game, if we have this many games, those games will lose the energy, will lose the intensity. It’s just my opinion.” 
Bernardo did add that he was looking forward to the 2025 tournament, no doubt mindful that he was at a Fifa event.
Guardiola also expressed concerns about the lack of rest elite players would be afforded as the Champions League expands, along with Fifa’s newly expanded World Cup finals which will feature 48 teams from the 2026 edition onwards.
“I think Fifa took a decision and all the clubs support that decision,” Guardiola said. “I am part of the clubs. What I would say is that when I was a little boy, I didn’t organise the competition. When I was teenager neither, a footballer neither, and now – neither.” 
He was reluctant to criticise the new Club World Cup outright, but he outlined his concerns about the likely effect on the players.
“I am not against new competitions. I am against the lack of time to recover between years [seasons]. This is what I’m complaining about. For me it doesn’t matter to play every three days, six days, seven days. It is OK. But it is really, really tough to finish the season and in three weeks you have to restart again.”
He said that the game had to examine the burden it was placing on players. Especially summers that required them to “go to Asia to be financially stable [earn extra revenue from summer tours], or go to the States, or wherever. It’s really tough for myself, but especially for the players and I think this should change”.
The new 32-team tournament, which will feature City and Chelsea from the Premier League, will be played after the international fixtures that will follow the end of the 2024-2025 season – and will require a reconvening of participating clubs’ squads. Guardiola suggested that City’s players would take their families with them to the US, where the 2025 tournament will be played. They will play seven games if they reach the final.
Fifa has signed an agreement with the European Club Association (ECA) – the key body representing Europe’s leading clubs – which secures their backing for the new tournament. Without that the new Club World Cup would not have been a possibility. Nevertheless, the global unifying players’ union, Fifpro, launched a scathing attack on the plan this week. Fifpro, which had a representative at the Fifa Council meeting in Jeddah on Sunday, said that the new tournament risked “exhaustion, physical injuries, mental health issues, diminished performance, and risks to career longevity”.
The tournament has attracted strong opposition from domestic leagues around Europe, especially the Premier League, which sees Fifa as direct competition for lucrative broadcast contracts. The Premier League is also concerned about the impact on player welfare. 
Although with its leading clubs authorising ECA to acquiesce to the plans – and identifying the potential to add a new revenue stream – the clubs’ view is not shared by the executive. Premier League chief executive Richard Masters is one of several European league executives who have signed a letter of complaint from the World Leagues Forum, which represents 44 of the leading domestic leagues across the globe.
Guardiola has won the Club World Cup twice before with Barcelona but this is the first time that City have played in the competition in any of its formats. They must first beat the Urawa Reds, who beat Mexico’s Club León, the champions of the North and Central American Concacaf region. The J-League team finished fourth in Japan this season but triumphed in the Asian Football Confederation Champions League. The final is on Friday night when the winners of City’s semi-final will face South American champions Fluminense, of Brazil, who beat Egypt’s Al Ahly 2-0 in Monday’s semi-final.
Guardiola said that his team’s indifferent Premier League form – seven points from the last 18 – would not affect this game. “It will be completely different,” he said. “We would prefer better results. Against Villa our performance was excellent. We have to improve how we finish games and be aware what we have to do in certain moments. Hopefully we can maintain our level of passion and desire with and without the ball.”
Asked whether City could still put together long winning runs, Bernardo responded with a question of his own: “Do you doubt us?” He added: “We will see what happens in May when it comes. Let’s see where we are. I am not going to say we will do it. I will say that [since he has been at the club] we have won five out of six [Premier League titles]. We can’t say this team is not capable of going on a good run.”
City have been fined £120,000 for their players surrounding referee Simon Hooper during their defeat by Tottenham Hotspur this month, after he failed to play an advantage that would have favoured Jack Grealish. City admitted the Football Association charge and the fine was set by an independent commission.